Amateurs Should Not Be Deciding Direction Of U.s. Foreign Policy

The ``privatization`` of American foreign policy came under strong and justified attack during the Iran-Contra hearings.

There`s nothing wrong with the United States using private individuals traveling abroad to gather covert intelligence information and report it back to appropriate government officials.

That`s a common, effective means of collecting important and often highly secretive data to help America anticipate and keep up with foreign affairs and formulate its foreign policy. Other nations do it and we should too.

But there`s plenty wrong with some government officials using these same private individuals to implement that foreign policy by lobbying other government officials, then carrying out secret missions abroad.

Unfortunately, that`s exactly what happened during Lt. Col. Oliver North`s controversial reign as basement White House whiz kid. Distrustful of normal government channels, North used an unofficial group of amateur intelligence analysts and would-be foreign policy makers not only to collect information but to carry out top-secret missions.

The group, which included an engineer, a building inspector and a house painter, used exiles to develop a network of sources in Haiti, Grenada, Jamaica and other Caribbean and Central American countries to provide detailed political information. Their information and their aggressive lobbying efforts in Washington have gone far beyond tipping off the United States to growing communist, Marxist and Cuban efforts to destabilize the region. The group has actually had a key role in turning U.S. foreign policy in the direction of combating that destabilization, including the 1983 invasion of Grenada and expanded support of the Contras in Nicaragua.

The objections to this extraordinary privatization effort are obvious:

-- It allowed unknown private citizens, not accountable to voters or their elected leaders, to wield enormous influence over American foreign policy, then carry out that policy.

-- It has encouraged a group of people, supposedly working to aid the U.S. government, to attain such an extraordinary degree of independence from government control that they have sometimes actually worked against stated U.S. policy. One example is when they backed Joaquin Balguer in the Dominican Republic`s 1986 elections, and unsuccessfully tried to get Washington organizations to support Balaguer, depite official State Department neutrality and unofficial opposition to Balaguer.

-- It has given a group of overzealous, anticommunist political ideologues so much credibility they actually successfully pushed the United States to invade Grenada, then were sent down there to monitor the progress of the invasion.

While America had legitimate interests in preventing a Marxist takeover of Grenada, the heavy involvement of amateurs in provoking military intervention is troubling. Their role should have been limited to intelligence-gathering.

The scary aspect of all this is that even after the public disclosure of the questionable actions of this private army of foreign policy-makers, they remain active players attempting to influence foreign affairs. Now, the group of amateurs is butting into an even more sensitive and dangerous arena -- Iran. They are doing this by trying to find ways to stir up a revolt to overthrow the Ayatollah Khomeini, according to the group`s leader.

Again, while the United States may wish to pursue policies to topple the ayatollah, the efforts to do so should be conducted by the government, not by amateur foreign policy makers.

Amateur meddling into such a high-tension hot spot is too scary to contemplate further. Somebody at the White House -- preferably President Reagan -- ought to tell them to butt out. Implementing foreign policy is a job for the pros.